


Tiger Striped Cat

by roughmagic



Category: Destiny (Video Games)
Genre: Angst, Complete, Explicit Language, F/M, Friends to Lovers, Gender-Neutral Pronouns, M/M, Multi, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Reader-Insert, Romance, Time Skips
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-02
Updated: 2018-09-03
Packaged: 2019-07-05 16:44:41
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 3,678
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15867648
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/roughmagic/pseuds/roughmagic
Summary: 1. Die a million deaths2. Revive and live a million lives3. ? ? ?4. Cry a million tearsCayde/Reader





	1. EASY COME, EASY GO. . .

**Author's Note:**

> Three days until Forsaken, huh...

It ought to be illegal for Exos to participate in eating competitions. Not to be organicist about it or whatever, but Cayde can’t sweat bullets like you can in the tiny ramen shop. The lacquered bar top sticks to your armor and the heat from the kitchen is a fragrant furnace that feels like it’s five inches from your face. You’ve never eaten this much in your life, in any life. You’ll probably die from it this time around. 

“If you stop now,” Cayde says, elbow knocking against yours and causing a slice of pork to drop from your chopsticks back into your bowl. “I won’t tell anybody.”

“You won’t be telling anybody anything in hell,” You manage, through a huge mouthful of food that seems to be resisting your efforts to chew it. “Which is where I’m sending you. When I beat you at this.”

“Oh, well, if I’d known we were putting our immortal souls on the table, I would’ve wagered a bit more.”

He’s probably got some kind of matter-to-energy convertor that never gets full. There’s a stack of big bowls slowly growing at his side, bonito flakes and little dregs of broth the only sign that they had originally arrived full, _heaped_ with noodles and meat.

Guardians burn a lot of energy, and you’re out in the field whereas he just props up that big meeting table all day and dusts bootprints off his map. You _should_ be able to keep up with him. 

After the last pork slice, though, you can’t. You just can’t. Your mouth might open but there is no room left past your teeth. With a groan, you let your forehead rest on your arms as you slump over the bench, listening to Cayde somehow making lip-smacking sounds as he finishes off his bowl entirely. “As much as I would _love_ to see you disgrace yourself, it’d be a waste of good food if you end up puking.”

“I slingshotted around the sun on Kozai resonance and didn’t throw up, I’m not gonna—” You stop as your guts make a threatening noise.

“If you’re going to brag about it, you have to take me with you,” He spins around on his stool to lean back against the bar, drumming his stomach like he didn’t funnel half his weight in noodles into it. “Things have been quiet. We could sneak out, go on a jaunt…”

You burp, deeply.

“Alright, I’m calling it!” Cayde laughs, patting you on the back and letting his hand stay there for a moment. “I win, you’re paying, let’s get outta here.”

You’ve got more Glimmer than you know what to do with anyway, so you don’t really mind footing the bill, but losing rankles. It’s an excuse to practice and try again until you can beat him, though, and you like a challenge. It feels like a relief to have a goal that doesn’t require a gun in your hands.

Cayde probably knew that, hence the challenge that required venturing out into the City. It was the sort of kindness that was easy to disguise as him needing a break from Vanguard duties, so it spared some of your dignity.

He doesn’t seem very concerned with your dignity as he tries to half-drag, half-prop you up as the two of you leave the ramen shop, exiting back into the street. People either pointedly ignore you or openly stare, but nobody goes out of their way to avoid you. Cayde loops an arm through yours and extolls the virtues of the ramen shop’s coupon system and how easy it is to game it, occasionally pausing to point out favorite bars or good junk shops also crammed into this street.

There’s the sense that he’s done this with you before, and you’re not sure if it’s leftover déjà vu sickness from your time in the War Cult. Everything with Cayde feels familiar, and he likes the sound of his voice enough to repeat whole spiels if they’ve gotten lost in the shuffle of your memory. He doesn’t know the full story and he hasn’t asked, which is part of why you do things like this with him. Weird, personable things without purpose or mission objectives or timers or quotas.

“Oh, and that place? I can’t go back in there.” Cayde points two a two-level bar with an illegally beefy frame standing guard outside it. “They’ve got my picture up and everything. In fact, don’t even look at it, let’s just keep walking. You would not believe how sensitive some people are about, ah, card tricks.”

“You _cheated_ ,” Sundance corrects him, reappearing briefly near his shoulder, flippers clicking in agitation. Your own Ghost trails behind and trades a look with you.

“And they weren’t? Everyone at that table was counting cards, it was practically necessary to get creative…”

The night goes from orange lights to a deep purple sky, the farther away from the heart of the City you go. The Tower stands like a final marble lighthouse before the world turns into darkness and wilds. 

It feels strangely formal for him to stop with you on the plaza steps, gold lettering on the tiles under your boots. There are maybe one or two night owl Guardians organizing their Vaults at the consoles, but the pigeons outnumber them. The wind buffers keep the breeze light and warmer than it should be at this height, and Cayde hasn’t said anything for at least a minute. 

“Sorry. I zoned out.” You turn to look at him and find him already looking at you. “What were you saying?” Your Ghost would normally prompt you for where the conversation had left off, but they’ve given you a lot of privacy tonight.

“Honestly, I don’t remember either.” Cayde clears his throat, shrugs it off. “I wasn’t joking, though. What I said earlier? About that adventure. With the… cozy resonance.”

“Kozai. It wouldn’t be cozy. It’s cramped." If you'd been faster on your feet, maybe it could've come out like a joke instead of a stilted correction. "You have to do it in a single-man jumpship. Otherwise you have to recalculate the perihelion and that’s a lot of math.”

He nods like any of that mattered to him, which it clearly doesn’t. “I’ll bring some whiskey?”

You look at him sharply and he doesn’t turn away. Doesn’t do anything, in fact, just stares back. The directness makes you defensive. “Are you making fun of me?”

“What? No! I mean it. You, me, a too-small cockpit, some booze, the sun.” He animates again, gear clinking quietly as he spreads his hands, takes a meandering few steps to end up closer in your orbit. “What’s the worst that could happen?”

You feel like you’re back in the ramen shop, face hot and stomach vaguely upset. He knows you, and what’s worse, he knows you’re damaged goods. And he’s still asking. “I’m not good at romance.”

You’re better at strikes. Even at the Crucible. At long stake outs, at material reclamation. At irresponsible jumpship antics. You’re an active Guardian so no one looks at your personal life. At what you’ve lost, what you still sometimes lose in service to the War Cult. It’s not sexy stuff.

“You’re not even good at being nice.” His horn almost clonks your forehead when he ducks closer, and his voice drops an octave or so. “But I like that. Spicy ramen.”

“Don’t mention food. I really will throw up.” You’re exaggerating, but you need an excuse to turn your head and flush in another direction. “It might not work out.”

“I know, I know. We’ll keep it casual, very cool. No expectations.” Cayde comes close enough that you can see the light from his eyes catching on the worn fabric of Andal’s old cloak. It’s kissing range, but you’re about a million light years and several geologic ages away from being ready for that. His voice is soft and he’s close enough to touch you, but he keeps his hands to himself. “No harm in trying.”

“Trying,” you repeat.

“Try with me.”


	2. LIFE IS BUT A DREAM. . .

His new quarters still look sparse, lots of bare concrete and unvarnished surfaces. There hasn’t even been time to construct drapes, so one of his old cloaks is tacked up to block the light from the arrow slit of a window. Of all the things you miss about the old Tower, you hadn’t expected the shutters to be one of them.

Cayde hasn’t put as much time into nesting as you think he did the last time around. His junk is in boxes instead of piles, and you’re more likely to find him in the hangar. He really only seems to spend any time in his bed when you’re in it. It’s just the same barely-bigger-than-single-person bunk that’s been easiest for the construction frames to churn out to try and house everyone. You aren’t complaining. It beats the bags of chicken feed on the Farm by a wide margin.

The cloak is too thin, and there are bullet holes. Seems to let late-day orange sunlight in directly where it can make you squint and keep you awake. Cayde’s up too, the arm slung over your side holding your hand in his, playing with the fingers. Lacing between, squeezing, bending gently. The sort of gentle, thorough examination of a mechanic or a locksmith. He’d gotten that way with your foot one time but you’d laughed too hard to let him keep going.

You heave a sigh, unable to feel sleepy. “You still awake?”

“Yeah.”

“What are you thinking about?”

“Ah, the usual. Nothing at all.”

You put your feet against the close wall of the bunk and use it to push your hips back into his. Cayde grunts and mutters _Well_ now _I’m thinking about_ some _thing_ , but doesn’t do much else.

“I mean it.” His inner workings aren’t a total mystery to you, but you never know what he’s thinking when he’s silent. “Tell me.”

“If you _must_ know,” Cayde heaves a sigh. “I was lamentin’ the idea that humans wanted to control one other so badly they found a way to put each other inside machines.”

Years of practiced self control mean you don’t shift around in surprise, although it always throws you for a loop to hear him talk like that. His deep thoughts are usually limited to hand cannon modification ideas, or new card cheating techniques. Practical things that can be touched and quantified.

The differences in your bodies had never bothered you. And it hadn’t occurred to you that it might bother him. Introspection isn’t one of his signature moves. But he’s talked or drunk or carried you through your own messes even before things somehow got romantic, and you want to always return the favor. Even if it’s just listening right now.

If you’re quiet too long, it’ll make him think he shouldn’t have said anything. You reach an arm behind your head to feel for his face plates, give yourself something to touch absently while you think. “You think it was an act of control?”

“Maybe not for folks rich enough to choose it.”

Even the Golden Age hadn’t escaped money. It’s easy to forget in this time, when survival is the priority. It’s never occurred to you, but maybe he chases treasure as much as he does because it’s an instinct left over from his last life. His human life?

Wriggling again, you lift your side up and he slides an arm underneath you automatically, lacing his fingers together around your front. “I like your body.”

“Oh, I know.” You elbow him for that, although he’s right. “Just seems odd that years of engineering would go into making mine do what yours does naturally.”

“To be fair, it took millions or billions of years or whatever to make mine like this.” That doesn’t seem supportive to your ears. Cayde’s always the one who cheers you up, so you’ve got his example to follow. “Would you still kiss me if I were a caveman?”

“Sweetness, if you were a four-legged frog recently emerged from the ocean, I’d still think you were the prettiest amphibian.”

“You’d better. Did you want to keep talking seriously?”

“Nah.” Cayde draws closer, hooking his chin over your shoulder. “I’d rather fool around seriously.”

It’s not like you to insist that he knows he can talk to you about deeply painful things, especially not when you’d much rather follow his lead. By nature, neither of you are terribly open with your feelings, but you hope he knows you’d listen if he wanted to talk. 

Things aren’t really casual anymore—he’s seen you at some of your lows and you’ve read his journals. You want to keep being his friend even more than you want to keep him in bed with you.

The bed thing is still good, though, you admit to yourself as he rolls the two of you over, unafraid to pull your hips up and slip a hand between your legs, even as he runs a hand down your spine to end at your skull.

“Oh, uh, unless? You did?” Cayde stops, the mattress creaking as he tries to lean over and get a better view of your face. “Which is cool, I just, it was kind of a good segue and I didn’t want to kill the mood with more existentialism—”

“No, I’m good. Keep going.” Arching back into his touch, you smile. It’s nice of him to check in.

There’s a moment where he’s so quiet he has to be thinking about something, and you worry he’s trying to make himself continue, before he actually speaks up. “Could I persuade you to… ask for it?”

Your first instinct is to push yourself up, grab him by the horn and make _him_ beg, but it’s a lot of effort just to maintain your reputation. He might be smarmy about it later, but it could feel good to let yourself rest in his hands.

It still takes a moment to talk yourself into it. “Keep going, please?”

Cayde sounds like he’s taking in a breath he doesn’t technically need, and you feel him practically lay down against your back, hips aligned perfectly with yours. “Oh my stars and garters, I didn’t think that’d _work_ —”

He sounds so dazzled, you have to laugh before you ask him again.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Just one more full day!


	3. YOU'RE GONNA CARRY THAT WEIGHT.

You keep the permacrete of the Tower to your back, palms laid flat against it. Your Ghost is staying still, watching carefully and radiating distress. There’s grating under your boots that separates you from the long drop down the City, and although you can see through it, you have to trust it. You have to watch it. Closing your eyes returns you to the machine, to beyond the veil.

Your stomach drops out and makes the big leap down when you see Sundance flicker past the corner and Cayde follow. You’d thought the chances for him finding you down here would be low, but evidently, not low enough. The encounter unfolds the same way it did in a thousand different iterations, and you’re helpless to stop it.

“Sundance said you tore outta Lakshmi’s like your Ghost was on fire, you okay?” Cayde weaves in front of your vision but knows better than to put his hands on you quite yet. “She didn’t put you in—oh, she did.”

He makes a soft little noise of surprise when you bury your face in his chest like you could burrow down behind the plates to what makes him _him_ and stay there. Constrict everything there, hold it together.

“You know that future vision stuff is bad for you.” Cayde pets you, a little heavier than gentle would be. It feels better than a light touch would, grounding you. “I told you… well, I guess it doesn’t much matter what I told you, since it happened. You’ve got your reasons for going back under.”

You probably had good reasons, but they’re lost. You have a thousand different memories of that last conversation you had with Lakshmi, all compiled into one overlapping onion skin. Whatever she’d dangled in front of you or prodded into your back, you’d gone in.

Cayde had only ever asked once, what it’s like to be put in the Future War Cult machine. You’d been bitterly drunk so you’d compared it to drowning just to get him to shut up about it, because at some point he’s sure to have drowned, so he could understand that. Or if he hadn’t and was feeling particularly sorry for you, he could go and try it? You’d said that, too, and he’d never asked again, and you’re glad, because you don’t think you would be much kinder about it sober. 

It hurts in ways that are different from drowning. The process, even with the medical soup they pump into you prior, is ugly and confusing. It’s worse for people who aren’t Guardians, Lakshmi purrs, either once in the beginning or every time since. You’re helping them, you’re helping the City. The shrapnel you bring back lodged inside you gets picked out and reassembled to form the most probable timelines, the prophecies that get trotted out only after the tragedy has confirmed itself.

“Hey,” Cayde jostles you, alarmed by your sudden onset of tears. “Come back to me.”

You feel like you’re circling the drain. There’s so much past to fall back into. The teammates you lost that put you on Lakshmi’s radar to begin with, a Guardian ready to throw themselves into the twilight of instability that even thanatonauts try to avoid. Cayde. Missions that had gone wrong, missions that had gone right and still cost everyone around you everything and left you with nothing. Coming home to Cayde. The present Cayde. The future Cayde.

“You two—any insights?” Cayde moves to rest his chin on the top of your head. “Help me help us.”

Sundance twirls their back flippers in a little helpless motion, and your Ghost tries to look as small as possible, murmuring shyly about _it’s a lot to process_ and _things will be okay_.

“Listen—I can’t believe I’m saying this, but I’m… actually in the middle of something. Or the beginning of the middle of something. Point is, I’ve got duties to shirk right now, and you don’t look like you’re in shape for an adventure right now.”

You nod. 

“But, hey. You’ve got your Ghost. And the key to my quarters, right? Let yourself in, sleep it off, drink my best booze, whatever you’ve gotta do.” He steps back, hands cupping your face. You can’t look him in the eye. “And when I’m back, we’ll go out to eat—your choice, my treat.”

He’s always going to go. You can see it, the moment like the same joint in a thousand fingers. You might spill everything, and he would still go. It’s just who he is. Who he was. And who he will be, until he isn’t anything, anymore.

You want to make it important, to say something he can carry with him like a silver bullet or a lucky charm. Not everyone gets the chance to say goodbye. You have one, and you’re standing there like a silent pillar of dead flesh.

“So we’ve got a plan. I run this errand, you sleep it off, when I’m back, we go out for food and then I make you come so hard you can’t walk straight.” He waits before he sighs. “Not even a smile, huh.”

You try to make your mouth do something like a grin, and Cayde winces. “Oh, boy, that is gruesome. Yikes, nevermind, keep crying.”

That does force a smile out of you, and he doesn’t critique this one. It trembles and eventually folds like the rest of you wants to, but your knees are locked.

“Rest up, I’ll be back.” Cayde tries to wipe your tears away, and mostly just smears them all over your face. Then he turns, leaves, transmats away.

There should’ve been a moment that stretched out longer than it really took, where you memorized the way he walked, or how his shoulders were set. You should’ve done something meaningful. But nothing happened, he simply turned and left.

That’s how you had lost your fireteam. No real goodbyes, no confessions. Mostly just in quick moments that passed before you had time to realize, to turn it into a story you could replay to try and understand.

“You saw him in the machine, didn’t you?” Your Ghost asks. So gingerly. Like even the sound of the words might break you. And your mouth opens just to let out silence, and a couple of other attempts leave you without anything.

“It’s alright. About talking. Or not talking. I mean, it might be brain damage, or something psychosomatic, and I’m freaking out a little, but we’ll be okay!” They do a little encouraging spin, and it breaks your heart all over again that you can’t thank them, or give them any kind of assurance that things will be alright.

They will, of course. You lay down to sleep in your own quarters, the room that you had issued to you but never spent any time in, not when you could sprawl around in his.

But it’s good to have a place that doesn’t smell like anything. Nothing is too familiar. There are no shutters to keep the sunlight out when you lay down on the bunk.

Your Ghost comes to rest between your neck and your shoulder, minute little ticks and twitches as noisy as worrying out loud. You want to promise them you’ll keep moving forward, that you’ll pick yourself up out of this pit like you did the last time, and so many times before. And you will, with actions, if your words don’t come back. Life will go on. 

You don’t have to, though. Just for a moment, you can be still. You can wait until time runs out, you can give yourself this moment to grieve what you’ll lose.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I've been avoiding watching cutscenes and stuff, so the details of tomorrow are gonna be... fresh. I also heard our Guardian has speaking lines again, which is cool! I thought it'd be interesting to see one lose their voice instead. :P


End file.
